"Problem I see with blogs," quoth the good Bishop, "is who will read them?"
So I was led to spend much of the past season online in the small world of LiveJournal, where about 95 folks regularly read my posts, that is, when I post anything at all.
Then, about a week ago I got an email from a friend of the family we hadn't seen for years and years, who stumbled across this blog -- either this one or my more personal one. It was nice to hear from her, and get pictures of her children. And last night I went to a Mardi Gras party in Astoria -- Nawlins people start Mardi Gras at Epiphany, after all, it's their only industry -- and an eccentric gentleman (even for that crowd) began speaking of my comments on the Russian Catholic Church, not knowing that they were in fact mine, intimating that our host needed to get involved in blogging, not knowing that he in fact has posting rights on this blog, which he has never used. So I thought I'd best revive the enterprise, even though the original members, mostly from the First Hour list, have migrated over to LiveJournal without doing much here. So I am posting this message, and sending reminders to many of the folks I invited way back when, who never responded, and inviting a few more folks I have met since.
And if this blog develops a distinct traditionalist, even monarchist, or antiwar flavor, well so be it.
I have joined +S and nasha Dasha on LiveJournal; this doesn't mean that I am abandoning you on Blogger -- they are different tools for different purposes. Let me explain.
LiveJournal has the excitement ICQ had three or four years ago, and SixDegrees in its brief incarnation. It is for people, mostly young people, or at least young at heart, with an impulse to express themselves, explore, reach out. There is a sense that you are not signing up for a service as much as joining a community, if only a community of communities. And the notion of community is a bit different.
Anyone can read this blog, but to post on it you have to be invited, respond to the invitation, and fill out the registration. To post an entry you have to be somewhat nerdish, or at least comfortable with nerdischkeit. This is perhaps suited to something like Between the Worlds, which is based on a definite vision, that which created the First Hour journal and mailing list. On Live Journal the expectation is that everyone is a distinct center of interest. To see the postings of all +Seraphim's friends, you go to his page and click on his friends, and you will see everything his friends have posted in chronological order. Inevitably he will have LiveJournal friends who would have no interest in First Hour, and whose postings would not be appropriate for either First Hour or Between the Worlds. He already has friends who are not mine, and I have friends who are not his, and ditto for Dasha, and that is how it should be. Each of us is the center of her (or his) own world.
Classical blogging is more top-down. People start blogs because they have a point of view they are moved to share, often one not well regarded by the general culture, and likeminded blogsters link to each other's blogs and respond to each other's postings. There is an active conservative Catholic blog community, which our Gerard refers to as St. Blog's parish, well represented by himself and by the Old Oligarch's Painted Stoa. The group blogs, like this one, tend to be run by folks who have a common commitment. Libertarian Samizdata is a good example.
At least that's the way I see it.
And as it will soon be the fourth of July, check out this message from, not National but Rational Review. posted by arisbe 11:17 PM
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Good news:
Anyone who missed +Seraphim's talk on Dionysius at St. Vlad's can now read the text at Dasha's LiveJournal site.
And, as you might have noticed, whoever you may be, you can now add and read comments to the entries here. posted by arisbe 9:54 AM
Monday, June 10, 2002
An Orthodox Irishman in the Russian Catholic Church
Thursday, May 23, 2002
Shortly after I announced the ArisBlog on the First Hour list, I saw that Gerard had placed a link to it on his Blog page, under Catholic blogs. I found this a little embarassing, since I haven't called myself a Catholic (without further qualification) since I left the Roman Catholic Church three years ago.
Before Attila the Nun comes at me with her mil. spec. razor sharp steel ruler, let me hasten to add that I was received into the Russian Catholic Church sui juris by order of the late John, Cardinal O'Connor, acting on authority granted to him by Pope John Paul II. Like most members of my tiny denomination I prefer to think of myself as an Orthodox Christian in communion with Rome, but I do not insist on this, largely out of respect for my true blue Ortho friends who claim that they just haint no sech animule, though the Melkite Greek Catholic Church is a marvelous counterexample.
If you ask why I did what I did the way I did it, I can only say that I want to live the integral life of an Orthodox Christian, but I cannot in good conscience repudiate the graces I experienced in the half century of my life as a Roman Catholic, which indeed brought me to where I am now. Further, I am a product of modern Western civilization. Much as I revere the memory of Philip Sherrard, with whom I studied, all too briefly, in 1969, I cannot agree that it is heretical root and branch, particularly in its unique ideal of science and human dignity.
12:37 PM
Friday, May 24, 2002
Ed MacDonald writes, "I don't think referring to the RusCath church as a 'denomination' is quite right. Makes us sound like Free-Will Baptists."
It does sound a bit grand for an outfit with no bishops, maybe ten priests, and a couple of hundred communicants. I was thinking of denomination in the sense of variety, as in, "There are three denominations of Russian Orthodox in New York, the OCA, the ROCA Synod, and the Patriarchal." and ourselves as a would-be fourth, I suppose. It's all right for Roman canon lawyers to call us a Church sui juris, but that is precisely what we are not. Our mandate from the Holy Father was to preserve the customs and traditions of Orthodoxy intact, except for any incidental accretions that might be contrary to the Faith, such as, I suppose, the veneration of St. Peter the Aleut. But on the whole we steer a middle course between the innovations of New Skete and the ossifications of Jordanville.
2:56 PM
Sunday, May 26, 2002
"Did Sherrard consider "Western Civilization" as heretical? I don't see how an abstraction can be accused of heresy."
How like a Westerner (never mind that I'm one myself) to assume that only the individual is really real, and that that which he participates in is mere abstraction! From a Traditional point of view, which I may not be able to represent very well because it is not fully my own, this assumption is not merely intellectual error or spiritual blindness, but enthrallment to a very particular Spirit of Lies, to whom the Papacy opened the Roman Church in the time of St. Photios, which eventualted in the demonic practice of autonomous sciences of nature, and the equally demonic pretention to individual human rights.
Such was the belief of a dear and good man, sadly deluded, his delusion shared less by Orthodoxy in general than by his fellow Traditionalists, many of whom were converts from European occultism to Islam.
10:32 PM
Where are all the other posters? Daria? Dennis? +Seraphim? (Not to mention all those we invited to join who haven't... yet...) Once again, I will paste in some stuff from TOB (That Other Blog), but if you want to see the links, you will have to go there yourself.
Hoi Deipnosophistai
Friday, May 31, 2002
Interesting discussion of beauty last night at New York's Cafe Philo, meeting at the Bamiyan Restaurant on 26th and Third. As before the meal was pleasantly priced, though a single appetizer would have satisfied my immediate hunger, and I have sated my curiosity about garlic noodles in yogurt sauce, and will most likely not order it again.
These philosophy discussions are held over dinner on alternate Thursday evenings, and are open to the general public. The crowd they attract is somewhat middle aged, with about equal numbers of older and younger folks, and as interested in listening and responding to each other as in sounding off, a pleasant change from other gatherings of the sort. The next topic, for June 13: How do we decide?
11:27 AM
Incidentally, the date, the eve of Bastille Day, is perhaps not inappropriate, as Bernard Roy, the founding moderator of the event, was inspired by Marc Sautet's cabinet de philosophie, which met at the Café des Phares on the Place de la Bastille. For more on this, see Roy's Philosophical Value of Coffee-House Debates.
Cafe Philo does not exhaust the public philosophy scene in New York. Every Tuesday evening, starting at 6:45, Evan Sinclair hosts a Socrates Cafe at Sony Plaza, 550 Madison Avenue. His inspiration is Chris Phillips, a former student of Matthew Lipman, whose post-doctoral training in philosophy for children I was privileged to attend early in 1990. Phillips' Society for Philosophical Inquiry boasts Lipman on its Board of Advisors, along with Robert Coles and Jacob Needleman, whose Heart of Philosophy is a book I wish everyone I know would read.
And once a month Lou Marinoff, author of Plato, Not Prozac leads a spirited discussion at the Barnes and Nobles on Sixth Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets.
11:49 AM
Thursday, June 06, 2002
I found myself on Washington Heights Saturday evening, and dined at a restaurant that would be worth the trip on the A Train, Bleu Evolution. Meanwhile, on the Upper West Side, I see that the number of blogs registered at Broadway and 72nd Street has grown to twelve, the newest being New York City Bartenders & Patrons.
The latest post, announcing the commencement of the pig roasting season in the meatpacking district, gives the flavor of it: "Nothing beats eating meat and drinking beer in the sunshine on Tenth Avenue, with scores of amazing Harleys parked all over the place. The crowd is good and the food isn't to be missed. The bar is hopping and crazy busy. Bring your appetite and you'll have a great time at Red Rock!"
On the main site, to which the blog is connected, the emphasis is on the bartenders, who are are preponderantly female, some of them quite preponderantly so. (Bartendresses? I like the sound of that.) I'm not going to link to it -- find it yourself! I'm a moral sort of guy, after all. Seriously, though, only one of the blogs at my stop is that of a porno professional (I'm not going there either), which speaks well of our fair city, at least on the nerdy side.
John Zmirak's new column is out, this one on Revolting France. Speaking of Bastille Day, as we were the entry before last or the one before that, it was of course John who organized that wonderful garden party in Alphabet City two years in memory of the martyrs of that unfortunate revolution. The proprietress of the garden almost refused to allow it to be used, as she is, alas, a Republican, that is to say, not a Monarchist.
Those of us in the Russian tradition should host a similar event some day, perhaps not in February or even October, but on the Sunday of All the Saints of Russia, which falls a week after All Saints, that is, two weeks after Pentacost, generally in June.
9:54 AM posted by arisbe 9:57 AM
Thursday, June 06, 2002
Just to get things going, here are some related snips from my other blog, pasted back together in a less random order:
The Barclay Street Ferry
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Yesterday the last steel girder was taken away from the World Trade Center site; there will be a solemn commemoration service tomorrow. A week from Friday the Messaging Software Division of... never mind which Wall Street bank... will move back to Barclay Street. I have been back twice, to secure things from my old cubicle, box some for the move from the thirteenth floor to the twelfth, carry some here to Broad Street opposite the Stock Exchange, throw many papers away. The atrium has been cleaned up and the windows which gave such an impressive view of the Towers are covered by an American flag [ten] stories high.
When I was first moved out of the cube, but locked in the building with five thousand other technologists, I was lucky to have an email account outside the Bank. I found my way to a terminal and sent out the following:
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 06:31:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Frank Palmer Purcell"
Subject: I am all right
The North side of 101 Barclay has been evacuated. I am sending this from the printer room. It is not safe to leave the building yet.
I could see the fires raging in both towers, and a tiny body falling.
The claim that I was all right was somewhat premature, to say the least... but the details can be read on my 9/11 page.
11:34 AM
Thursday, May 30, 2002
Right about now, a few blocks from here, a stretcher, empty except for an American flag, will be carried ceremonially from the World Trade Center site as a symbol of the thousands whose mortal flesh mingled with the elements on September 11 without leaving behind any identifiable remains. I feel no need to be there, having watched the North Tower collapse quickly into dust from a few blocks away.
By that time, I now understand, nearly everyone still alive had been evacuated; the greatest loss of life had occurred when the South Tower, the second hit, fell quite soon thereafter, as I stood on a bridge sixteen stories above the atrium of my own office tower, covering the windows with a brown pall of debris. But it was as I was walking homeward as rapidly as I could after descending innumerable stairs, turning back to see the spectacular collapse, that I was struck by the overwhelming weight of human lives extinguished.
10:49 AM
Wednesday, June 05, 2002
I was back on Barclay for a meeting this morning and found my old cube dismantled and my new one not yet constructed. Good thing I got my stuff into boxes, which are now in the custody of the movers. My things here at Broad Street, opposite the Stock (not Stocking!) Exchange will have to be boxed at the end of next week.
At the North Fork Bank (formerly the Keshkerrigan Irish bookstore) I picked up a couple of local papers, with some details on the reconstruction effort. Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill has designed a rather nice tall prism in the form of a parallelogram to go up over part of the site of WTC 7, between Washington and Greenwich Streets, the latter being extended from Barclay to Vesey. A little park might go in the triangle left over.
And I see that the magnificent Hoboken ferry house is finally being renovated, to be completed for its centenary in 2007. My father took an early retirement when the ground started to be cleared for the World Trade Center at the end of the '60s. He particularly disliked having to ride the PATH, the Tubes, as he called them, rather than the ferries he had taken for so much of his life, at least since he graduated from eighth grade to work on the Hoboken docks.
After a late shift chalking freight in Hoboken for stronger men to lift, he and his cronies would cross for the 2 a.m. Mass which was held for the printers who worked for the newspapers around what is now Pace University. After communing with their God (and mine) they would gamble, whether with dice or with cards I am not certain -- perhaps with both. (He never told my mother that he bought her first present with the winnings of a poker game; she would have disapproved most strongly.)
In late middle age Western Electric transferred Dad from the great Kearny plant to AT&T headquarters at 195 Broadway. I remember singing carols in Christmas Eve in the grand lobby of this too little known architectural masterpiece, and it was one of the first places downtown I went after September 11, to see that, so close to Ground Zero, perhaps as close or closer than I myself had been, it was still all right.
I think that, as he commuted from a job he didn't really like to our suburban home, he took pleasure in embarking on the familiar boats to the grand terminal only two years younger than he, to take a train over the same railroad, I imagine, that his grandfather came over from Ireland to build, or rather, to carry water to the boys big enough to swing a pickax.
3:23 PM
Blog Between the Worlds 
Monday, March 10, 2003